Poison & Wine
by TactfulTourniquet
Summary: "Is the wine to your liking, mano širdis?" - Another turn of events or what could have happened in the last episode of Season 2 if Will would have changed his mind and truly cherished the idea of leaving with Hannibal. No (living) Abigail here. -


This here is just a little idea I had to put out of my mind to go on with other stuff^^'

I was inspired by Dori Hartley's wonderful Hannibal art to write this little story.

Oh, speaking of 'art' - Insiders' tip for all Fannibals and Hannigram- Lovers!

Amazon : Antler-Velvet-The-Dori-Hartley-ebook/dp/B00O69LETW

Dori Hartley is an unbelievable talented artist, who expresses her love and devotion for the TV-Show Hannibal und the bittersweet, murderous, passionate, morbid and utterly delicious pairing Hannigram with wonderful, realistic portrays and other works. If you want to take a closer look at the art book to decide whether you really should buy it or not, here's a promo-video from her :

watch?v=uOvCxYBvtDw

I assure you, you won't regret it to flip through the pages of this little treasure yourself ! It's a must-have for everyone in the Ravenstag- Universe ;)

Oh, and you might have heard about the Addams Family before? I must confess, I always idolized these movies and this family and I think based on the soon following Halloween is here a dark touch has sunken in my Hannigram this time, inspired by the relationship of Gomez and Morticia ...

Also the song of The Civil Wars, "Poison Wine" was a beautiful company while I wrote this. Maybe you want to hear it too : watch?v=WfzRlcnq_c0

Anyway, (hopefully) enjoy reading / consuming this text!

* * *

"Is the wine to your liking, mano širdis?"

Will heard Hannibal's words, but did not look up to him to give his full attention.  
He rocked the satin-gloss blood in his glass with the right hand, releasing mellow waves of aromatic wine with his swing, illuminated by the light of the swirling fireplace in which the fire gnawed at the logs for a few hours now. There was an oppressive atmosphere in the room. Not the one that mingled with the guests at a funeral and had death in disarray, but the one that was associated with a knowledge paved unspoken in the corpulent jacketed air and did not intend to move forward in louder birth.

Will took his time with the answer, sipping on the fine good, made from smoky Nebbiolo grapes and felt the spicy, yet tart bouqet of cherry and tannin dissolve on his dry tongue. His nose dived into the scent of white truffle and young faded roses. He inhaled the melange in quiet enjoyment, undoubtedly aware of Hannibal studying each tiny twitch and reaction on his face from burgundy red eyes, soaking them up like the oxygen caught in their working profiler enjoyed this too and had recently given up trying to hide it. Eyelids lowered at half-mast, he led the glass away from his mouth and propagated a profound, acrylic blue gaze at Lecter while he cleaned his wet shiny lips dutifully with his tongue from last ruby drops.

The flames at their feet were reflected in warm orange on the free, soft skin shown under rolled up fabric. Intentionally he leaned slightly to the side, offered his pale, vulnerable throat in an outrageously hedonistic manner due representing a strip of naked flesh above the loosened collar of his lavender shirt. The bark-brown depths of the doctor met the frivolous nestling around his ice flanked pupils and held each other in an unbroken bond. Will promoted the inch of a light smile he shoved agonizingly slow upon his mouth. The whites of his teeth flashed between brightly mottled lip pads and wore the mute hissing of an essential provocation.

Did he presume too far already? It mattered little to him. Within their progressive relationship structure he had become gradually aware with certainty that the feelings he felt for this man could be very badly devalued by the simple concept of _fear_. The dreams in which he killed him with bare hands had melted away freely to those in which he sat on top of him and strangled his throat, nails dug into his skin as he impaled himself on his big, throbbing cock and rode him like a tiger, back and shoulder blades bathed in cool, salty sweat, his hair damp on his fevered skull and moaning his name between stifled cries while he cursed, praised and damned him.

The doctor had broken into several levels of Will's psyche, no matter if they had been of emotional, moral or physical origin. He had done it so often and so largely that the profiler could take their relationship in no account of modern conveniences or frames, neither he wanted to. Even the monumental boundary stakes of _love_ and _hate_ failed to keep their desired meaning when it came to Hannibal Lecter and him. There was no crime scene, no pattern to analysize and realize, categorize and divide up into a fixed bundle that could be jettisoned as the crowded cargo of a ship freighter came up with a leak and threatened to sink into the ocean.

"It's good. Better than good. But with your adequate taste I would not have expected less." The words fell from his mouth like peach pits, although he wished the next moment, it would have been rotting teeth. His tongue was bound in velvet and he did not find the courage (or lust?) to rotate a blade between his lips and slide through the treacherous envelope.

And this was mostly annoying, dangerous_. _

_ Sweet._

"A _Barolo_ from Piemont.¨ Hannibal said. "Vintage 1934. A wine of this type may only be bottled after he has matured in oak barrels for two years."

Will interrupted eye contact and glanced to the side as he had suddenly lost the interest for his doctor.

He played.  
He played way too often lately. One day it would cost his head and he knew it.  
Will had been called _the madman_ often enough to shine in this role when he needed to.  
But what was _crazy_ by today's scale? To dine with a murderer or to dance on the edge of a knife to see what happened?  
Will believed both would be considered equally as insane behaviour and lied to himself yet again.

"It was very expensive, I suppose." he said thoughtfully. He heard the clink of a glass parked on the side table.

"Saved for a special occasion." the psychiatrist replied. Will heard a raw note in his voice and thought back to Gideon.

_He is the devil, Mr. Graham. He is smoke._

Smoke. Yes, he was. He was the acrid smoke, burning in Will's eyes, ears and throat. Quickly he took another sip of his wine to wash away the sour taste in his mouth.

"May I take this as an evidence for the region in which you've planned us to settle down at last?" he asked laxly.

He knew that Hannibal's folded hands dropped to his knees to stay there, without even having to look at him. He knew so much about this man. So much cruel and bloody and seemingly bleak pieces of the art he performed, the murders he was responsible for and the little, filthy errors he had sown under the FBI's crime scenes. They had to act like Hansel and Gretel picking up bread crumbs in the moonlight, while the forest densely flanked around their puny figures and first luscious tears fell down from their chubby cheeks. And yet there were a million rooms in the doctor's mind palace that Will did not know about. His deeper insight was denied. Hannibal's mind was like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a construct of breeding sin and cracked patterns. Networks, spun from sound and illusion between the houses, only serving to catch the purpose and exclude, to cut off, to keep in stock.

Will wondered if he himself would eventually end up on Hannibal's plate someday.

"Well, I've got properties in several parts of the world. We have free choice. Florence is wonderful, though." Hannibal's baritone slid gently from his lips, as the name of the city surged between them. "Have you ever been to Italy?"

"No." Will frowned. A momentum of his childhood washed over him. It was a dreary episode, overshadowed by perpetual loneliness and lack of roots. "I had to move many times with my father, but I was never outside of America."

He almost felt how Hannibal nodded at his words.

"It's beautiful there." he reiterated his previous praise. "Not as gorgeous as you, but I'm sure you'll love it."

The profiler flirted with the remaining contents of his glass.

"I won't doubt that." he replied. He said no more.

He rose out of his chair, driven by a desire, a need he did not name, and instead was guided solely by his instincts, leading him to emphasize his fingertips over the edge of the maple desk, while he moved around the room's center in a slender crescent arc, Hannibal waiting for him at the other end.

"There is something that I wanted to ask you for a long time." he said, blinking shyly, despite his attitude betrayed his tone. He, however, had reached the psychatrist's chair, only a few inches away from Lecter's appearance, looking at him mutely.

"Go ahead." Hannibal did a further gesture. "Tell me what burdens you. My concern is always on your command. "

In this second, Will let out a soft sigh as he guided himself down on the doctor's legs. Hannibal promptly silenced.

"Hm, you mean how Abigail's ear was at my command, too?" the profiler asked sharply, as if nothing had happened and he would not unabashedly rock on the lap of his former therapist now, his glass keeping in hand as ever, while the other arm girded Hannibal's neck to stabilize his current position. He could not resist the nasty tip, if it was so generously offered to do as he pleased, even though it was unwise, especially since he was currently sitting on the doctor's loins and maneuvered into the danger zone. The place was much more comfortable than he had expected and the heat of the foreign body crept up to his own, manifested itself in the fabric of his trousers and what it hid from the world under false modesty.  
Hannibal's shock (if there had even been a _shock_ at all), died down very quickly. Although he did not touch Will on his own authority, he did not complain about his insolent protégé. The expression of his face remained unreadable, but his eyes spoke volumes as they rushed over Will's body, savaging every particle in their corona. Will took it with a shallow sense of triumph.  
"Tell me if I should ever exhaust your patience completely..." he began, while shifting his weight into a corrupting position, exerting the pressure at points that were most likely unrecorded in any moral statute. Unfortunately, he did not even drew a short cut breath from Hannibal's self-possessed façade.

_Too bad_.

"In which variation would you want to serve me?"

Hannibal thought about it. He spread his legs a little further apart, so that Will's buttocks hung in a gap of heat and treacherous ground. A factor that animated the profiler to nestle his arm stronger around Hannibal's neck in order to prevent the feeling of sudden instability. The wine in his glass gurgled alarmingly high in its crystalline shell.

"Nothing exorbitant." the psychiatrist explained. "I would take your heart. It's the organ that would suit me the most. In the Middle Ages it was considered to be the seat of the soul. I'd like the thought to carry you with me in the afterlife."

Will snorted.

"It shouldn't surprise me anymore to hear such things from you." he muttered. In reality he did not know what he had expected as Hannibal's reply, but somehow this version made him happy ... at least it could have been far worse. But his curiosity needed more food to breastfed on.

"How would I taste? Would you _spice_ me?"

The words tasted strange in his tongue. Dull and tough as worn leather.

"Not much. I think I'd enjoy you barely raw. Sauteed, otherwise pure and unadulterated in my mouth." Thin lips ghosted over Will's curls. "Your essence needs no garniture." it breathed against his scalp.

Will pressed himself harder at the foreign and yet so familiar chest. A tremor ran through his entire body and he opened his mouth in a silent, choppy groan. He knew that Hannibal thought about tracing the lines of his lips with his fingers in this second.

Maybe it was the Barolo earning him this levity, but even if, it couldn't be only the alcohol's fault.

"The mere fact that I like the idea to be eaten by you should make me worry. I seem to have forgotten who I am or who I've been trying to be all this time. Oh, and I don't even know what's worse."

Sighing, he turned and let himself fall backwards. He felt the iron weight of Hannibal's arm, as it supported him just above his pelvis and kept him still. The security, sent from his older Partner, appeared somehow ... comforting to him. "And yet I am not afraid. This is unhealthy thinking, right? "

One of his legs threatened to sag over Hannibal's kneecap and disorientedly commute between soil and air. Hannibal prevented this by using his free hand to grab Will underneath his thigh and brought him closer against him. His thumb tip rubbed over the covered skin and sent shivers of clotted ice over Will's spine. Hannibal was death. If he was not careful he would be _his_ death. But it did not stop him to stumble deeper and deeper into the fathomless lake he had been guided in with bandage and dagger.

"I guess the opinions would go separate ways here."

"Like everything else what we do and matters to us." Will muttered. He thought of the FBI, of Alana Bloom, Freddie Lounds. _You and me against the world_. Had he not heard this somewhere in a song? Or in a movie? Well, it definitely had a reason why it had remained in his memory.

"Are you with me?"

The delicate hint of uncertainty in the otherwise secure voice. Nearly laughable.  
The profiler turned his head.

"I'm with you. Till the bitter end." His forehead collided gently with the psychiatrist's. Their views were overlapping. He felt the doctor's hot breath on his stubbly chin. "And bitter it will be."

It earned him a dark laugh. It was short-lived.

"I cherish your pessimism, but I have another course in mind for us."

Will raised an eyebrow.

"And that would be?"

"One without our tragic death or capture. If you can arrange yourself with that."

"I'm not suicidal, I'm _realistic_, Hannibal. No matter where we flee, they'll find us one day."

"Not if we previously cut all connections that could cause problems."

Will's brow furrowed. He sensed something. He did not necessarily enjoy it.

"You mean ..."

"First, we'd kill Jack." Hannibal continued calmly. Fingers ghosted over Will's throat, feeling the rapid pulse of the carotid artery. "Then Alana."

Will tilted his head to one side, evading Hannibal's touch. To his own surprise, the doctor let him be.

"Despite all this, Jack is still my friend, Hannibal." he said. Hannibal conducted his face closer to Will's neck, digging his nose in the sensitive, moonlit membrane of his skin. Eyes closed, he opened his narrow lips and inhaled the profiler's scent with devoted vehemence. It reminded Will of the one time when he had smelled him in his office. He had complained about his obtrusive aftershave afterwards. The memory gave him an involuntarily shiver.

"You don't need friends. Not now and not in our future." the doctor decided.

"Why? " A faint, mocking smile. "Because I found _you_ ?"

"Because you found yourself." Hannibal said. "Your true nature." His fingers ran quite negligibly over Will' s covered torso. The mild touch could not prevent to calm the already hardened nipples under the fabric. Will pressed himself against the traveling fingers, anxious that they felt his rushing heartbeat." What can be even more trustworthy than the own beast?" he heard Hannibal say. As they were talking past each other and not _with_ each other.

He snorted.

"Oh, and what about the beast on whose lap I'm sitting? Is it not trustworthy?" he teased.

"It is to your hearing and therefore willing to some degree. This is a difference." Hannibal corrected him. "But it may turn against you anytime."

"Hm. Should I be afraid?" Will asked in blatant indignation. His eyes glowed. The doctor gave him a quiet look.

"Should **I**?"

"Maybe." He turned his narrowly opened lips along Hannibal's jaw, moved higher, nipped at one earlobe. "Freddie Lounds lives." he breathed in the shell over it and let it reverberate in Hannibal's tantrum.

A fragment of silence, as Lucifer's snake would pave through the room.

"I know."

Will paused.

"Since when?" he asked. He felt a burst of electrical sparks run down his unprotected neck. Maybe it had been a suicidal idea to hook on Hannibal's skin like ivy on wall niches. **So** _reachable_. But now it was too late anyway. Hannibal's hands held him like porcelain tableware, vulnerable and passionate and not having intention to let him go that fast.

"Since yesterday evening. I smelled her perfume on you."

Will groaned. He had not included Hannibal's fine senses in his plan_. A beginner's mistake_. It annoyed him.

"Why didn't you kill me already?" he grumbled, embedded his cheek in Hannibal's neck.

He received a kiss on his temple. Almost maternal.

"And take away my precious? That would be more of a punishment for me than proper vengeance." the psychiatrist told him unusually soft. "I have more plans for you than dishing up your heart, William."

"You're still upset with me."

"This is not quite true. Disappointment would be a more comfortable expression for what I feel right now."

"Hm." Will blinked. "If it makes you feel better - I don't think about betraying you anymore. I changed my mind... a few hours ago."

"So? Where does this change of heart come from?" Had Will not known better, he would have thought Hannibal sounded _amused._

"I was _naughty_. " he replied bluntly. "I browsed through your drawings when you were in the kitchen and I am particularly concerned about that one of Achilles and Patroclus. I don't think it's a coincidence that Patroclus seems to be very similar to my appearance. And also _you_ have more in common with Achilles, as one should guess at first glance. I wonder how thin the fabric of the blanket is that parts their bodies." He looked Hannibal deep in the eye. "Patroclus died in front of Troy's gates, as he threw himself into battle. No one was there to have his back. Achilles failed to protect him."

Hannibal's hand went from his chest down to his waist, hovering over his collarbone and finally rested on his cheek. Will felt the hand that had destroyed countless lives and removed thousands of organs just to cook them in kitchen, prepared with spices and marinade. He snuggled up to the touch, more urgent as it would have been necessary and carefully closed his fluttering eyelids. It was paradox, but he felt safe.

"Achilles had sunk into a deep depression and couldn't bear the fights anymore – until Patroclus took his last breath. When they brought him the corpse of his beloved friend, his thirst for revenge decided the war." The strong baritone seemed to stroke his ears. When he felt a thumb tip gently caressing his cheekbones, Will peered curiously through his eyelashes. "I'm not Achilles, Will, and you won't share Patroclus' end. I'll take care of that."

"I know you will." The thumb tip came to Will's lips, lay dully over them. Instinctively, he opened his mouth and licked the finger with his tongue, tasting a nuance of the rough-prone flesh. "That's why I stay with you. Therefore, I will go and don't look back." he whispered darkly. His irises drowned in a sea of raw greed and he felt his heart banging against his sternum like a fury. His conscience stood on thin, thin ice and he did not care whether he would collapse or not.  
He saw a flicker arise in Hannibal's sanguine eyes and a moment later he realized that he would find no sleep in this night. Not that he would have asked for it.

"How shall I ever be sure of your loyalty?" the psychiatrist asked instead. Will put the rest of the wine to his lips to gain time. Emptied the glass completely. A trickle of kerosene fluid dripped carelessly from a corner of his mouth, and fell on his shirt. It left stains. _Oops_. But he did not care, he believed anyway that it would not remain in one piece during this evening.

"You can test me as often as you like." he offered patronizingly and it was clear that he stumbled over a burning coal carpet with these words.

Hannibal smiled with an indulgence that straightened the hair on his nape.

"I don't think you'd survive more of my _tests_."

Will weighed out the chances of his survival. Hannibal harbored a perfidious preference for tests and undoubtedly lethal equipment. This had never been a quarrelsome issue in their relationship. However, a Hannibal, who spared him with such things _was not Hannibal_. At least it seemed so to him.

"It's worth a try." he decided then and swallowed. "Or a second. A third ... I'm not that fragile anymore, dear."

Hannibal leaned deeper into the chair. He closed his eyes for a few seconds.

"You really have been worth every second I invested in you." he mused. Pure adoration danced in his voice.

Will plowed playfully through a few ash-blond strands. Oh, how he'd love to pull at them right now. Maybe later…

"I don't know yet if I should say the same thing about you."

"Oh? How shall I dispel your doubts?"

For the first time this evening, a broad grin crept on Will's face.

"Surprise me." he whispered. His lips were only a few inches away from Hannibal's. For a heartbeat it was perfect, the time stopped. Even the fire altered its crackling breath.

"Consume me." The tip of his tongue, still wet with moist red drops, licked at the corner of the older man's mouth. "Until nothing is left of me that belongs to this place. I don't want to drag any unnecessary weight with me when we begin our new life. Together."

The psychatrist smiled.

"As you wish."

And as Hannibal finally kissed him with hunger, thirst and the need to mark, Will dropped the glass to the ground and heard it shatter into shrill shards on the smooth parquet while the taste of blood, alcohol and cherry filled his mouth and a blissed groan escaped his lips, choked by Hannibal's broad tongue.

No more charades. No word tissue, no more games this night.

Hannibal Lecter always offered two things when they had dinner. Poison and wine. One even sweeter than the other.  
Will had learned that it was wise, even exhilarating, to accept both as it would be the ambrosia of the gods. And who knows, maybe it was.  
And if he received his gifts rather in the underground of Hades than on Mount Olympus where the gods had their own way with humanity, he had to admit that he would prefer this pleasant hell over every garish sky texture.

He rather stayed with the devil he knew how to deal with, instead of having to prove for a society which wanted to see nothing more in him than a madman or a murderer.

Actually, he had become both. Had relished his beast and mated an equal.

He was free, he was wild, he felt no fear and no grief anymore.

He was loved and courted by a monster. And he loved this monster back with all his foolish, aching heart.

* * *

Hey, me again :)

This was my first time writing dark!Will. Wow, I'm nervous X'D

Any comments about this work? I'd appreciate them very much^^

Greets,

RoseOfBrisingr


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